CLASS ACTIVITIES

To test your understanding, answer in writing without looking back:

1. What titles did you select for the three parts?

2. Why did the teachers wait with anxious hearts on the first night?

3. How many people did they expect? How many came?

4. Name three different groups of people who came, and in each case tell what lack in their lives they came to fill.

5. What range of ages was found in the pupils?

6. Who wrote the first three letters in the school? Why did the author plan the first part of her story as she did?

3. GAINING WINGS

EDNA DEAN PROCTOR

I

A twig where clung two soft cocoons
I broke from a wayside spray,
And carried home to a quiet desk
Where, long forgot, it lay.

2

One noon I chanced to lift the lid,
And lo! as light as air,

A moth flew up on downy wings
And settled above my chair.

3

A dainty, beautiful thing it was

Crange and silvery gray,

And I marvelled how from the withered bough

Such fairy stole away.

4

Had the other flown? I turned to see,

And found it striving still

To free itself from the swathing floss

And rove the air at will.

5

"Poor little prisoned waif," I said,
"You shall not struggle more";
And tenderly I cut the threads
And watched to see it soar.

6

Alas! a feeble chrysalis,

It dropped from its silken bed;
My help had been the direst harm
The pretty moth was dead!

7

I should have left it there to gain

The strength that struggle brings:

'Tis stress and strain, with moth or man,

That free the folded wings!

CLASS ACTIVITIES

1. Tell the story of this poem. Is Miss Proctor telling only about moths? What lines best express the larger meaning?

2. Can you guess why "Gaining Wings" is placed in this section with the three selections which precede it? Explain.

CLASS-LIBRARY READINGS

OVERCOMING DIFFICULTIES FOR AN EDUCATION

1. "How a Blind Girl Learned to Read," Story of My Life, 29–46. 2. "Learning to Speak," ibid., 55-62.

3. "The Hunger for Self-Education," A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After, 15-25; "A Boston Pilgrimage," ibid., 26–36.

4. "Starting a Newspaper," ibid., 68–77.

5. “Helen Keller," Book of Knowledge, 17: 5285-5286.

6. "Partners in Pluck" (Charles and Mary Lamb), More Than Conquerors, 27-53.

7. "Through Failure to Success" (Phillips Brooks), ibid., 253-283. 8. "The Star-Showered Beauty" (Edwin Booth), ibid., 287–311. 9. "Winning the Knowledge that is Power," Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, 2:827-833.

15. "The Schoolma'am of Squaw Peak," Laura T. Kent, in Atlantic Prose and Poetry, 256–265.

A poem about football, about a "scrub," a boy on the second team, about school life! Perhaps this poem, like others in our book, will help you see that poetry often tells about interesting things and is often easy to understand. Remember that a poet usually leaves much unsaid; he relies much more upon the imagination of the reader than does a writer of prose. Try to see the boy huddled in his blanket watching the game.

He had not made the team. The ultimate moment
Last practice for the big game, his senior year-
Had come and gone again with dizzying swiftness.
It was all over now, and the sudden cheer
That rose and swelled to greet the elect eleven
Sounded his bitter failure on his ear.

He had not made the team. He was graduating:
The last grim chance was gone, and the last hope fled;
The final printed list tacked up in the quarters;

A girl in the bleachers turned away her head.
He knew that she was trying to keep from crying;
Under his tan there burned a painful red.

He had not made the team. The family waiting
His wire, up state; the little old loyal town

That had looked to him year by year to make it famous,
And laureled him each time home with fresh renown.
The men from the house there, tense, breathlessly watching,
And, after all, once more. he'd thrown them down.

He had not made the team, after years of striving;
After all he had paid to try, and held it cheap-
The sweat and blood and strain and iron endurance

And the harassed nights, too aching-tired to sleep;
The limp that perhaps he might be cured of some day;
The ugly scar that he would always keep.

He had not made the team. He watched from the side lines,
Two days later, a part of a sad patrol,

Battered and bruised in his crouched, blanketed body,
Sick and sore to his depths, and aloof in dole,
Until he saw the enemy's swift advancing

Sweeping his team-mates backward. Then from his soul
Was cleansed the sense of self and the sting of failure,
And he was one of a pulsing, straining whole,
Bracing to stem the tide of the on-flung bodies,
Helping to halt that steady, relentless roll;

Then he was part of a fighting, frenzied unit

Forcing them back and back and back from the goal. There on the side lines came the thought like a whip-crack As his team rallied and rose and took control:

He had not made the team, but for four long seasons,
Each of ten grinding weeks, he had given the flower,
The essence and strength of body, brain, and spirit,
He and his kind the second team till the power
To cope with opposition and to surmount it
Into the team was driven against this hour!

What did it matter who held fast to the leather,

He or another? What was a four-years dream?

Out of his heart the shame and rancor lifted;

There burst from his throat a hoarse, exultant scream.
Not in the fight, but part of it, he was winning!
This was his victory: he had made the team!

CLASS ACTIVITIES

1. Why does Miss Mitchell repeat "He had not made the team" at the beginning of each stanza? What does it mean "to make the team"?

2. At what point might you divide the poem into two parts?

3. The first stanza shows how much can be condensed in a few lines of poetry. Find other examples of condensation in the poem. 4. Read aloud two or three lines which make you know that this was a college football team.

5. Why is the word made printed in italics in the last line?

دو

6. Did the story of the "scrub make you think of any similar experience of your own? Can you tell the class about it?

7. Look up the words: ultimate, harassed, aloof, dole, rancor, exultant. 8. Use these topics for conversation and discussion.

a. It is harder to practise than to play a game.

b. A hard game our team played.

c. One of our substitutes who made good.

d. An example of team-work in our English class. e. A "star" player who is also a "star" student. f. Examples of "school loyalty" in our school.

9. Can you add any other test of sportsmanship to these:

Ten tests of a sportsman: (1) He does not boast; (2) nor quit; (3) nor make excuses when he fails; (4) he is a cheerful loser; (5) and a quiet winner; (6) he plays fair; (7) and as well as he can; (8) he enjoys the pleasure of risk; (9) he gives his opponent the benefit of the doubt; (10) and he values the game itself more highly than the result.

2. PLAYING THE GAME

HENRY NEWBOLT

The first scene in the poem is the "Close," the playground of a boarding school for boys in England. The boys are playing a game of cricket, the national sport of England, as baseball is ours. Ten